Utilizing Tech Season 6 - Utilizing AI Tech Field Day

AI is accelerating application development and modernization in many ways, but developers are just ramping up their use of the technology. This episode of Utilizing Tech includes Paul Nashawaty, who focuses on application development at The Futurum Group, discussing this topic with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. Use cases for AI include documentation, chatbots, data integration, programming co-pilots, and more. Regardless of how AI is used, organizations must accept that they are ultimately responsible for the products and outputs produced. Accelerating testing and thus the entire DevOps release cycle is one area where AI is making incredible growth. Another popular concept is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) which brings existing datasets to generative AI to improve results. There is currently a lack of confidence in AI-based solutions and concern about the complexity and level of effort required to bring them to market, so vendors must help make deployment easier and better integrated. Product vendors are addressing this by delivering solutions with partners and popular platforms and frameworks. Open source tools and open data are also helping to move AI technologies forward. Developers want invisible infrastructure and platforms that just work, and the emerging AI PC segment promises more processing power on the desktop. 2024 is shaping up to be the year of AI in application development.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠
Allyson Klein: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/

Paul Nashawaty, Practice Lead, Application Development Modernization at The Futurum Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulnashawaty/

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Tech Field Day
Website: ⁠https://www.TechFieldDay.com⁠
LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day ⁠
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Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AppDev, #AI, @TheFuturumGroup, @GestaltIT, @TechFieldDay, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @PNashawaty,

We are at a turning point, as AI has matured from theoretical experimentation to practical application. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Neeloy Bhattacharyya joins Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett to discuss how VAST Data's customers and partners are making practical use of AI. Data is the key to successful AI-powered applications, and VAST Data supports both unstructured and structured data sets. Neeloy emphasizes the interactive nature of AI application development and the flexibility required to support this. He also discusses the need for structured data to support LLMs and the challenges of keeping these up to date and synchronized. One of the biggest issues in deploying AI applications is the complexity inherent in these systems. That's why it's heartening to see companies working together to created integrations and standardized platforms to make AI easier to deploy. Collaboration is the key to making AI practical.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/
Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/

Guest:
Neeloy Bhattacharyya, Director of AI/HPC Solutions Engineering at VAST Data: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neeloybhattacharyya/

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Tech Field Day
Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com
LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day
X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay

Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AI, #Data, @VAST_Data,

Ultra Ethernet promises to tune Ethernet for the needs of specialized workloads, including HPC and AI, from the lowest hardware to the software stack. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Dr. J Metz, Steering Committee Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, discussing this new technology with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. The process of tuning Ethernet begins with a study of the profile and workloads to be served to identify the characteristics needed to support it. The group focuses on scale-out networks for large-scale applications like AI and HPC. Considerations include security, latency, ordering, and scalability. The goal is not to replace PCIe, CXL, or fabrics like NVLink but to extend Ethernet to address the connectivity and performance needs in an open standardized way. But Ultra Ethernet is more than hardware; the group is also building software features including a Libfabric interface and are working with OCP, DMTF, SNIA, and other industry groups.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠⁠
Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠⁠

Guest:

J Metz, Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and SNIA, Technical Director at AMD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmetz/

Everyone uses AI today, whether they know it or not, and it's critical for users of this technology to understand its capability and limitations. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Chris Grundemann, a fellow podcast host and Tech Field Day delegate, talking the many ways we use AI every day. Like Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett, Chris uses AI to assist with content creation in many ways, from summarization and organization of data to image generation. Content creators are using AI tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and more to process data, but we all agree that it's best to spend time and effort to refine the output, especially when it comes to tone and voice. We are also using AI based tools for coding and structuring data, especially interactively. Although some have suggested that AI will replace content creators or coders, the technology is instead democratizing access and making it easier to use on a daily basis. It also makes computing more available to those who were previously locked out, expanding the impact of the technology we have spent decades creating.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠
Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Guest:

Chris Grundemann, Managing Director at Grundemann Solutions: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgrundemann/

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#UtilizingAI #Storage #AI #Datacenter #Hyperscale @UtilizingTech

Many people involved in artificial intelligence don't spend much time considering storage infrastructure. That's the topic of this episode of Utilizing AI, which features Ace Stryker of Solidigm discussing the role of flash storage in AI infrastructure with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Considering the cost of GPUs and the rest of the AI stack, idle time is the enemy. That's why it's critical to have a low-latency storage layer to support tasks like training.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠
Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Guest:
Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/

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Tags: #UtilizingAI #FlashStorage #AI @Solidigm @UtilizingTech

AI training is a uniquely data-hungry application, and it requires a special data pipeline to keep expensive GPUs fed. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on the data platform for machine learning, featuring Molly Pressley of Hammerspace along with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Nothing is worse than idle hardware, especially when it comes to expensive GPUs intended for ML training. Performance is important, but parallel access and access to multiple systems is just as important. Building an AI training environment requires identifying and eliminating bottlenecks at every layer, but many systems are simply not capable of scaling to the extent required by the largest GPU clusters. But a data pipeline goes way beyond storage: Training requires checkpoints, metadata, and access to different data points. And different models have unique requirements as well. Ultimately, AI applications require a flexible data pipeline not just high-performance storage.

Hosts:
Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/⁠⁠⁠
Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/⁠

Guest:
Molly Presley, Head of Global Marketing at Hammerspace: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyjpresley/

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Tags: #UtilizingAI #AI #AITraining @Hammerspace_Inc @UtilizingTech